We met with the ECI speech therapist. Jenny, our developmental therapist and Hannah’s biggest supporter, came to the meeting as well.
After Jenny and I answered the STs questions about where Hannah is out now, I realized that she doesn’t have the cognitive skills for real communication yet. She really is only at a 6- to 9-month level still. She really doesn’t even pass the NIH’s speech and language development milestones for 6- to 11-month olds as you can see below.
- She doesn’t understand “no” yet.
- She can’t babble “ma ma” or “da da” yet. She only babbles “ga” and “aga.” We lost “da da da da” (not referring to daddy, just the sound).
- She doesn’t try to communicate with us for the most part, except for a wail when she is upset.
- She doesn’t try to repeat our sounds because she doesn’t have the ability or knowledge of immitation (something we apparently take for granted!)
The lack of the ability to imitate has been our biggest obstacle to overcome. You don’t realize how much children learn by imitating people, sounds, things, etc. Hannah has to be taught everything, and that is repetition dozens and sometimes hundreds of times. But she is able to learn still, it is just a complicated and difficult process.
So the speech therapy, Jenny, and I decided that we are going to try and start Hannah on sign language at this point. Simple signs like “more,” “all done,” and “food/hungry.” Until Hannah has the basic skills for communication at a 12-month-old level, she really wouldn’t benefit from speech therapy as much, especially since we have occupational therapy twice a week working on feeding and other issues. So we are, for now, just going to have monthly consultations with our speech therapist to see where we are at, monitor Hannah’s progress, and continue to give us suggestions. She will also be working with Jenny directly, so Jenny is going to be working with us on her weekly visits on that as well.
Hannah is just learning “cause and effect”, just during these past couple of weeks. This is a huge milestone for us, as it is the very beginning of the communication path.
Once Hannah becomes more communicative and understands communication better, then we will go to weekly speech therapy visits.
Hannah is almost 15 months old. I keep forgetting how delayed she really is until someone points it out to me or I see other kids her age doing things so much more advanced than she is.
I just keep reminding myself that I have to be patient.
You are an awesome Mom! It’s difficult to acknowledge their delays, but kudos to you for recognizing that you need to go with Hannah’s learning curve. She’ll get there…. she’s just taking her own, sweet time.
Bertrand doesn’t pass those milestones either, but I think that signing does help. He opens his mouth when I make the sign for drink. 🙂 That’s about it for speech progress on our end, but hey, I’ll take it! Being the little firecracker that Hannah is, I am sure she’ll be signing in no time!
.-= Cristina´s last blog ..Annoyed… =-.
Ethan did sign language for is Speech therapy too. And right before we decided to stop his therapies, they started using pictures with him too. He repsonding to that pretty well. You might try pictures of things she uses a lot: toys, sippy cup, blankie, bed (so she can tell you when she’s tired), etc. We were going to do things like Ethan’s suction machine and/or oxygen so he could tell us when he needed suctioning. We didn’t get that far of course, but he had the concept down pretty quick. Just a suggestion. She will find her own unique way of communicating I’m sure!! Good luck!
Once again Carrie I really admire your STRENGHT, PATIENCE and LOVE you have for Little Hannah and she is soooo lucky to have a mommy like you.
The Sign LANGUAGE SOUNDS LIKE A GREAT IDEA!!! ITS AMAZING HOW QUICKLY BABIES WILL PICK THAT UP. SHEENAS BABY WAS ALSO BORN DEAF LIKE HER AND SHES ONLY 6 MONTHS OLD AND SHE ALREADY HAS BEEN SIGNING MILK FOR OVER A MONTH AND IS ALSO SIGNING MOMMY AND DADDY ON OCCASSIONS!! iT ONLY GETS BETTER!
HANG IN THERE, THERE IS A “LIGHT AT THE END OF THAT TUNNEL”!!
LOVE YOU GUYS AND OUR PRAYERS AND THOUGHTS ARE WITH YOU ALL THE TIME!!!
SUSAN
We did signing with our daughter as she had a delay as well. I recommend the book “Baby Signs”. I really, really recommend the DVD “Baby Babble” which I bought through Rocky Mountain Learning Systems. The DVD was developed by two speech pathologists and has all kinds of fun sounds and toys which my daughter loved. Not trying to sound like a sales pitch…My daughter just had a speech delay as well and this was the product that I thought was the best for teaching my daughter to mimic sounds and babble. Good Luck! You are all in our prayers!
I did baby sign with ellis i think its a great idea xxx